Acceptable Risks (16 page)

“Lark. He’s my best mate.” He winced at the words and tried to cover. “My best friend. For a decade. He trusts me to protect you—stop laughing!”

“Best mate?” She covered her mouth with her hand but it didn’t stop the unladylike snort. “Have I been wrong all this time about the platonic part? Are you two really soulmates?”

“Stop it. It’s a Harry Potter thing,” he grumbled, making her laugh all the harder. His entire body blushed.

“You read Harry Potter?”

“I listened to the audiobooks. During all those lonely hours of rehab when no one bothered to come see me, not even your father.”

She stopped laughing immediately. “I’m sorry, Jase.”

“Forget that. My point is that I will never do anything to hurt that man, and that includes defiling his daughter and if you laugh again I will pull this truck over and leave you on the side of the road.”

Instead, he pressed down on the accelerator as if he could speed out of the conversation.

“I think you underestimate my father,” Lark said softly, all hint of laughter gone. “I would say I don’t care, that I’ll be with who I want to be with, but that wasn’t how I started this conversation. I don’t—I’m not looking for a relationship of any kind.” She lifted the bottle of hand sanitizer out of the console and turned it in her hand.

Jason frowned at the bottle she was contemplating with an odd seriousness. He’d appreciated the thoughtfulness when she bought it, but what did it have to do with relationships? Did she think he was too weak? Maybe his cramping episode had scared her off. She thought she’d have to take care of him.

Or maybe it wasn’t him at all. Her career was important to her, of course. He was a little irritated at the idea that she thought he’d stand in her way. The work she did was important, finding plant-based medicines to help people like—

Oh.

“Are you thinking about your mother?” he asked softly. That Lark didn’t jump or look startled told him she was.

“My father wouldn’t trade what they had for anything, even to get rid of the pain of missing her.” She dropped the bottle back into the console. “But never having something to miss is different.”

Jason could tell she was trying to sound matter-of-fact, but her voice came out tight and shaky. Her father’s loss was only an excuse. She’d endured the same pain, and Jason had seen the toll it had taken, watching Kelly battle the simplest of illnesses for years. Even if Jason never got sick, the risk was too high.

It shouldn’t hurt this much to be rejected for something he told himself he didn’t want.

“Okay, then,” he finally said. “We’ll just concentrate on getting your father back and neutralizing Kemmerling so you can get back to your normal life.” Lark didn’t answer. When he glanced over she was facing the window, her elbow on the ledge and her fist pressed to her mouth. “Okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” He thought she might be crying, but when she turned to face him, her eyes were dry. “On a similar subject, I made some calls while you were running.”

That was an easy shift of topic. He hid his faint disgruntlement. “And?”

“My boss blasted me for taking off. The cops want a statement. I told him I’d go give one Monday, and left a message for the investigator that I would.”

“I don’t think—”

“That I’ll be back by Monday, yeah, thanks for dragging that fear up. The longer it takes us to find Dad, the worse off he’ll be. I just felt better with denial.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, there’s something weird going on with my ex-boyfriend.”

He so didn’t want to hear about her ex-boyfriend. But “What?” came out of his mouth anyway.

She shifted in her seat to settle more comfortably against the door. The position had her squarely facing him, trapping him.

“A couple of days before this all started, he got real friendly all of a sudden. We hadn’t been going out for a few weeks, but then one evening he came on to me in the elevator. When I put him off, he said he missed
talking
to me.”

Jason smirked. “Yeah, something’s up.”

“Seriously. But there’s more. He called me about the BotMed invasion.”

“Invasion?” He realized she meant Donald and Isaac. “Oh, that little altercation. Don’t worry, it was too small a deal to be on the news or anything. No one—”

“Yeah, I know. So how did he know about it? Plus, he offered to cook me dinner. Take care of me. It was weird. Then he got all commanding when I said I wasn’t home. Asking where I was and stuff. Do you think someone got to him?”

“Probably.” Jason should have anticipated something like this. “What does he do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Hang on.” He navigated the traffic circle and pulled up to the curb in front of the Castle, the administrative building for the Smithsonian. There was no sign of Gabby yet. He put down his window and turned off the ignition, examining the sparsely populated Mall and the path to the Metro entrance before giving Lark his attention again.

“What does Carl do for a living?”

“Investments. Why does that matter?”

“Does he do yours?”

“No. I use the same people Dad does.”

There had to be a connection stronger than the boyfriend thing, since they’d broken up. “How do you keep seeing him? What elevator did he come on to you in?”

“He lives in my building.”

Of course. “Yeah, I’m sure it was Isaac.”

She scowled. “To get to me? But he’s got to know I’m not…oh. He thinks he can use Carl to get into my apartment and look for my data.”

“It would be much easier than trying to break into the secure building again, especially since he didn’t seem to know about the greenhouse. He probably started watching your activities a couple of months ago. As soon as he learned—”

“That you survived,” she finished. “That asshole.”

Jason didn’t ask which one. He looked at his watch, then back toward the Metro. “She should be here by now.”

Lark checked her own watch. “Maybe she couldn’t get a train right away.”

“This time of day there are plenty, even on the weekend. And the station she was going to wouldn’t have been crowded. It’s near the end of the line.” He tried Gabby’s phone, but it went right to voice mail.

“Maybe she can’t get a signal underground,” Lark suggested.

Maybe, but his instincts were screaming. He climbed out of the truck. “Stay here.”

He hurried, not wanting to leave Lark alone for long, but the Metro station wasn’t far, and there weren’t many places to check. When he got back to the truck a few minutes later Lark was in the driver’s seat, her fingers tense around the wheel. As soon as he approached she jumped out.

“Well?”

He shook his head. “No sign of her.”

Lark backed toward the truck, as if seeking its protection. “That’s bad.”

Jason couldn’t reassure her. It was very bad.

Chapter Fourteen

They waited another half an hour, but Lark wasn’t surprised when Gabby didn’t show. They tried her cell phone, office phone and home phone three more times, with no results.

“What do we do?” Lark asked when Jason finally started the truck.

“We take you back to my house and I go looking for her.”

“No.”

“Lark.”

“There’s no time, Jason. If there’s any chance we can find her…”

He turned the truck off again. “I don’t like your vulnerability out here.”

“I’m not vulnerable, I’m with you.”

He snorted, but she did feel safe. She would have said she proved with Donald that she could hold her own, but if Isaac and his people could get her father, they could get her. So she wouldn’t be cocky. But if someone came after her, she was better off with Jason than alone, even in the safety of his house.

Jason didn’t answer, but climbed out of the truck and didn’t protest when she followed. His jaw line had sharpened, though, and when they paused to let a few cars go by, the small muscles in his temple pulsed. She vowed to lay low and not give him more reason to be aggravated.

They strode quickly to the Metro station entrance, Jason letting Lark go ahead of him down the escalator, presumably watching her back. The platform was more congested than the Mall above had been. People were heading home after a day of sightseeing and Frisbee-throwing.

“Are we going to take the train?” she asked.

“No, just check the platform.” They walked the entire area, even buying fare cards so they could get inside the gates. No sign of Gabby or anyone else they knew.

They hurried back to the truck and headed out of the city.

“We’ll try to retrace her steps, figure out how far she got,” Jason said.

Lark shivered. “We’re going back to Hummingbird?”

“She called right after she left there.”

“Is that…a good idea?” She hated that she was afraid of the place her father had built. Goddamn Isaac! She wanted to make him feel this way. Like anywhere he turned there was an enemy. “I mean, will we be targets? We don’t know who’s…you know. Against us.”

Jason shrugged. “We’re as safe there as anywhere.”

“But you’re dead.”

“Not anymore.” His hands tightened around the steering wheel. “Solving this problem is more important than keeping my survival a secret. I just need to check the logs. It’s late on a Saturday night. No one will be there now except active teams.”

They sped through the night in silence. Jason parked in front of the building and went inside. Lark waited, her body aching from the tension, and tried to keep an eye on her surroundings, not just stare at the main doors.

Jason was back in less than ten minutes but looked much grimmer.

“What did you find?” she asked as he put the truck in gear.

“That the night desk wasn’t surprised to see me.”

“What does that mean?”

“Matt didn’t keep me as much of a secret as he thought he did. It made it easier to see the logs, at least.”

“And?”

“Nils Fredlund was here today.”

Lark chewed her bottom lip. She remembered Nils as a scrawny geek type, but that kind of guy, sometimes a little bit of power went to his head. “Do you think he took her?” Or harmed her. “Is that all you got from the log? And where are we going?” They were headed back toward town.

“Nils logged in about half an hour before Gabby did, and he went down to the lab shortly before she logged out. He was probably in the elevator with her after that. She was the only one who swiped to come up to the lobby, but then he went up to the accounting floor before he signed out, immediately after her car left the grounds.”

He slowed as they drove into the square. “Shit.”

“What?” Lark looked around. She didn’t recognize the two people on the sidewalk, and they didn’t ring any “sinister conspiracist” bells. Most of the shops were closed and there wasn’t much noise coming out of the one bar. The Laundromat looked empty.

Jason parked in an empty spot near a sedan that looked familiar. Gabby’s? Lark clambered out to follow him back to the car, but waited on the sidewalk when he waved her away. He inspected the outside of the vehicle, then got on the ground and peered underneath, even though he couldn’t fit to slide under.

“It looks clean.” He tried the driver’s door. Locked.

Lark hurried over and tried the passenger door, but it was locked, too. She cupped her hands around her face and looked inside. No purse, no files, not even any trash on the floor.

When she straightened, Jason was looking behind her. She turned. The car was parked in front of a pet groomer, but next to that was Mike’s Cab Service.

“You think she took a cab?” When Lark turned back, Jason was already striding toward Mike’s door. “I guess you do.”

Lark hurried to follow him through the dirty glass door. “Mike”—whose real name seemed to be Rajendra Fitch—started out surly and uncooperative, but within two minutes was pouring out his life story to Jason. The relevant part was that Gabby had come in and paid for a ride to the Metro station. He dropped her off, and as he was leaving, she was talking to a short redheaded guy and a tall blond one.

Jason thanked the man with a tip and they went back to his truck. He sat with his hand on the key but didn’t turn it, then suddenly slammed his fist on the steering wheel.

“Hey, it’s not your fault.” Lark laid her hand on his arm. He jerked it away. Stung, she opened her mouth to snap at him, but closed it before she did. He was under a lot of pressure and probably hadn’t meant it personally.

“She was scared,” Jason growled. “I told her the car was tagged. That probably freaked her out and she ditched it. But stopping here to get the cab gave them time to catch up to her. They nabbed her before she could disappear into the Metro system.”

“We’ll get her back,” Lark tried to reassure him.

Jason cranked the engine. “Count on it.”

* * *

Matthew was getting bored.

His plan had been to let Isaac take him, confront the guy, learn everything he could about his plans, and foil them. It was kind of hard to do that when Isaac wouldn’t show up.

Matthew had spent a lot of his time wondering why the hell Isaac had abducted him in the first place. Since he wasn’t here trying to torture information out of Matthew, it had to be to keep him out of the way while Isaac did something else. If that was the case, Matthew was wasting his time here.

He paced the perimeter of the room, testing the softness of the dirt walls and trying to determine which side was at the rear of the building, away from the main entry door. His escape would be short lived if he crawled out right in front of everyone.

The basin and pitcher were solid china, and the only tool he had. He wrapped them in a blanket from the pallet, positioned them for leverage, and stomped hard until they cracked.

Creaking footsteps sounded overhead. Matthew quickly hid the wrapped, broken shards and watched the shadows cross the room above. The steps faltered, as if the person was drunk or carrying something heavy. The lock on the trap door scraped, and light flooded the pit as the door creaked open.

“Catch.”

Matthew had a split second to either jump back or leap forward. His brain registered subconsciously what they were dropping, and he made the right choice. A body landed in his arms, knocking him to the floor with the woman on top. The trap door thudded down, darkening the room again.

He lay flat on the floor, trying to catch his breath. His ribs finished yelling at him for the impact and let his lungs expand, at least as far as they could with the weight on them.

The woman sprawled across him moaned. He shifted, cradling her as he sat to keep her upper body off the dirt floor. His eyes readjusted to the dimness after the flash of light from upstairs. The woman moaned again. He supported her with his right arm and used his left to feel her scalp. She had soft, curly hair and no lumps. She’d probably been drugged, too. Who was she, and why had Isaac nabbed her? It wasn’t Ella; her hair was short and straight, and her body not nearly this softly curved. Not that he was noticing.

The woman stirred, then stilled. A moment later she scrambled away from him, moving several feet before she hit the wall and crouched, her hands in front of her.

“What the hell?” Her voice was raspy, the tone groggy. She’d been out a while but had clearly recognized danger almost as soon as she’d regained consciousness. Crossing the floor on hands and knees in the dark wasn’t smart, but neither was staying in the arms of a stranger who may have roofied you.

“It’s okay,” Matthew tried to soothe her. “You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her shadow stopped cowering and leaned forward. “Matthew?”

“What—?”

She leaped forward, throwing her arms around his neck and slamming into him hard enough to knock him on his ass if he hadn’t already been there. Seconds later, he recognized her voice.

“Gabby?”

“Oh, Matthew, we were so worried. You’re okay.” Her arms tightened across his shoulders, her head turning slightly until her cheek rubbed his. “I can’t believe you’re okay,” she whispered.

His own arms came around her with his first response. Pleasure at her joy, her uninhibited reaction to seeing him—to his body’s reaction to feeling her. But then his heart sank.

She was here. In this pit. Besides all the other reasons that was not good, it compromised his plans. He couldn’t leave now. Not the way he’d intended to.

Still, he could have this moment. He hugged her and let her cry for a few minutes.

Finally she eased away from him. “Oh, my goodness. I’m sorry.” She swiped her hands across her cheeks. “I didn’t mean—it’s the stress. The last two days…and then the drugs, I’m sure. The relief just overwhelmed me.”

“It’s okay. What happened?”

She told him about trying to get hold of him this morning about his message—a message he hadn’t left—and about Jason meeting with her. She’d gone back to the lab to secure information, and Nils Fredlund had intercepted her.

Matthew wished he could have neutralized Nils before he’d been taken. He couldn’t be working alone on the inside, but at least now Matthew could be reasonably certain Gabby wasn’t the other one. There was a chance Isaac had dropped her down here to play victim and get whatever he wanted to get out of Matthew, but he didn’t think his former employee was that sophisticated.

“I was so stupid, Matthew,” she lamented when she came to the end of her story. “I didn’t do what Jason told me. They got me at the Metro. I tried to bluff my way out of it but I’m no agent. Nils stuck me while the other guy distracted me by asking about you.”

Matthew controlled his surge of anger with difficulty. “Who was the other guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know who Isaac Kemmerling is?”

He could sense her shrug. “Everyone knows who he is. I mean, office gossip. But I never met him.”

Of course she hadn’t. She’d been hired long after Kemmerling left. “Can you describe the other guy?”

“Average height, blond, hazel eyes, good looking in a slick way. He had a mole right here.” She raised her hand to her face. “I remember that because I was looking at it when the drugs kicked in.” She sighed. “Things tend to fix in your head at the moment you realize you’re a complete idiot.”